Poll: DELETED_74993
- Thread starter DELETED_74993
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Hopefully they'll cut off your hands for something or other so you can stop filling this place with your bile.
WTF lol
By the time that happened they'd most likely not be Muslim any more, mainstream religion would be about as popular as cults/scientology today.
I went from reading about that song, to reading about the unit that it's about, and found this:
Wikipedia said:
423 in 26 years, makes for about 16 1/2 a year.
These days, there are 16 states that have the death penalty. So that's about 264 executions per year. The population of the USA is about 300 million, so you're talking about executing 1/10,000 of a percent of the population per year. The crime rate in America is about 4,000 per 100,000 residents, so that's 4% of the population. Now, not all of those will be crimes for which the death penalty can be given, but let's run with this. The death penalty knocks off 1/10,000 of a percent of the population, versus 4% being criminals, so that's one in every 40,000 criminals being put to death.
My question, then, is this: How do people expect the death penalty to make any sort of dent in crime levels? It's known not to act as a deterrent in a real sense (murder rates have been about the same for 40 years in America, despite the number of States using the death penalty falling, and execution rates falling) and it's pretty clear it can't act as a deterrent in the sense that dead people can't commit crimes, because you simply couldn't kill enough of them. Unless, perhaps, people want to massively lower the level at which we administer the death penalty?
Either way, America is clearly a pretty poor example of the death penalty in the way some people here love to think of it.
Soldato
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The death penalty is not a deterrent, as we see from the US. In fact, there is a correlation between the death penalty and an increase in the number of murders per string ('I've gone this far, got nothing to lose').
The death penalty will not deter a nutter from being a nutter.
People who want the death penalty brought back are simply sadistic. They just want revenge - nothing more - at great expense to the country.
The death penalty will not deter a nutter from being a nutter.
People who want the death penalty brought back are simply sadistic. They just want revenge - nothing more - at great expense to the country.
What makes you think that here and now would be so dramatically different to everywhere/when else?
You would be better off arguing that making prisoners wear bowler hats and dance a foxtrot in carparks for fast food restaurants would dramatically cut crime. At least there aren't any examples of that increasing crime.
Soldato
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It doesn't work as a deterrent. Also, would you put someone to death?
I think a lot of the people who want to bring capital punishment back would think twice if they had to execute a human being.
I think a lot of them would enjoy it. Bear in mind that we're talking about people who want to kill people.
Soldato
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"The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword."
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How ironic.
In a huge leap forward using modern technology and communications to afford the public greater access to government and democracy, the biggest topic of conversation is a petition which aims to push criminal justice and democracy back a hundred years by allowing state-sponsored murder.
This petition is a waste of an opportunity to make life better for ourselves and others.
If you want to sign a petition to correct an injustice, sign this one. This is a petition to demand the repatriation of people from the Chagos islands who were forced from their homes by a British government 40 years ago and continue to be denied the right to return home. More info on the cause can be found at http://www.chagossupport.org.uk/.
In a huge leap forward using modern technology and communications to afford the public greater access to government and democracy, the biggest topic of conversation is a petition which aims to push criminal justice and democracy back a hundred years by allowing state-sponsored murder.
This petition is a waste of an opportunity to make life better for ourselves and others.
If you want to sign a petition to correct an injustice, sign this one. This is a petition to demand the repatriation of people from the Chagos islands who were forced from their homes by a British government 40 years ago and continue to be denied the right to return home. More info on the cause can be found at http://www.chagossupport.org.uk/.
Man of Honour
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Do you want to bet that to supporters of the death penalty they're still the silent majority...?
It's not really a check and balance in the conventional sense of the term. In the UK (and I believe every other country with a legal system worthy of the name) you are tried for the instant crime and that is all you can be judged on - it doesn't matter whether you're a "bad sort" or guilty of other crimes/whatever, you're being tried for this particular crime and nothing else. Sure, in sentencing your previous crimes will come into consideration but until then you should have the same presumption of innocence as anyone else, this does mean that every crime and trial should be conducted to the same standard. Let's take a hypothetical here, if you know someone is already on 2-3 strikes and prima facie they're guilty of the third then potentially will there not be a temptation simply to investigate less thoroughly because "they've probably done it and anyway you've got previous crimes to rely on"? Equally it may go the other way and people will be loathe to condemn a person for a crime and ultimately lead to the death penalty so will expend all possible efforts.
Further to my last point that is an interesting thing about the death penalty, it may actually lead to more criminals being released as people normally don't like that sort of responsibility so may be more willing to give the benefit of the doubt rather than allow an execution to go ahead - if someone is in prison you can release them, it's not a compensation for an incorrect incarceration but it's a lot easier than reanimation. This is something that a number of lawyers who are personally in favour of the death penalty are aware of hence why they refuse to support it publically as it actually and counter-intuitively means fewer criminals get punished.
I appreciate you're being generous with your figures here but as far as I'm aware the number of executions drops off hugely for every state after Texas, as many retain the death penalty nominally rather than as an actual sentence to be carried out. I've got my suspicions that you could add up the executions in most of the other States and you'll discover it's not much more than in Texas alone.
I agree with your points, just that I think you're being overly generous if anything in how you've calculated it.
Yep, I was being deliberately generous, and I don't doubt that you're correct. I should have said my post that the numbers are far and away on the high side.
I fully admit that it would be a change to the way criminals are tried from the point of view of previous offences having a huge affect, but the same standard of evidence would have to apply as they do now so that mis-trials are few and far between. Certainly a jury would never be told his previous record.
I can't remember the stats, but the majority of crime in the UK is committed by serial offenders. By removing them from society permantantly would have a huge affect on the level of crime. The problem with locking people up for decades is that in my opinion is that it is a cruel and tortous treatment of people.
Crime costs the UK 2.5% of it's GDP every year, it's a huge figure affecting millions of victims a year. A 3-strikes rule would certainly be a deterrent to criminals, but it would also free up cash to provide proper rehabilition, drug treatment etc that we currently appear to pay lip service to in the UK, where prison is really viewed as just a temporary means of stopping them committing crime until their released again.
Except, as I've said, the amount of death sentences that can realistically be carried through is miniscule, and the cost of all that time on death row and all those appeals is massive.
So, we would basically need to massively lower the barrier to entry both in terms of offences - as you're suggesting - and in terms of the judicial process that permits it. I'm not sure that's either achievable or a good idea.
Man of Honour
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I don't believe in an "eye for an eye" retribution. It takes more courage and strength to confront the problem and resolve it and fix it, than it does to remove it.
|It's easy to say that when you're not directly affected by something horrific - however, I'd rather see a life sentence meaning life, than government sanctioned murder.
I don't know if I could flick the switch or be a witness to seeing someone's life extinguished. I like many of you here, have been in the unfortunate situation of seeing death first hand, and projecting that even on someone I didn't like is just not something that sits comfortably with me.
Furthermore, the most auspicious criminals will be able to afford the best lawyers, and the unfortunate person that is sent to his death because he couldn't afford a good lawyer makes it further unfair. It skews the system too much in the favour of the "worse" criminals... Also, what if it was manslaughter (whether voluntary or not) where do you draw the line? Is it for every death/murder? Child molesting? Rape? How do you grade it... it's too grey and murky for me. And just makes it far more complicated than it needs to be.
Seeing tougher prison sentences, and tougher prisons and proper rehabilitation and punishment to me seems far more effective. Certainly what we have now doesn't seem to work for a lot of cases, but would killing someone actually fix it? I doubt it, and we'd have blood on our own hands.
|It's easy to say that when you're not directly affected by something horrific - however, I'd rather see a life sentence meaning life, than government sanctioned murder.
I don't know if I could flick the switch or be a witness to seeing someone's life extinguished. I like many of you here, have been in the unfortunate situation of seeing death first hand, and projecting that even on someone I didn't like is just not something that sits comfortably with me.
Furthermore, the most auspicious criminals will be able to afford the best lawyers, and the unfortunate person that is sent to his death because he couldn't afford a good lawyer makes it further unfair. It skews the system too much in the favour of the "worse" criminals... Also, what if it was manslaughter (whether voluntary or not) where do you draw the line? Is it for every death/murder? Child molesting? Rape? How do you grade it... it's too grey and murky for me. And just makes it far more complicated than it needs to be.
Seeing tougher prison sentences, and tougher prisons and proper rehabilitation and punishment to me seems far more effective. Certainly what we have now doesn't seem to work for a lot of cases, but would killing someone actually fix it? I doubt it, and we'd have blood on our own hands.
Completely forget about death row as we are not the US, we will not have a death row.
It's not about lowering the barrier as we don't currently have a death penalty. It would just need a change in the law that says that after on issuing a 3rd prison sentance instead of being taken to prison you would be taking somewhere and killed.
The status quo is we do nothing and accept that people being vicimised and having their lives blighted by serial offenders and all the assoicated societal cost of that is an acceptable price of living in a "civilised" society.
Man of Honour
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It's a fair argument that locking people up for decades or indeed full life terms is cruel but then again I'm not certain that you could suggest that execution is a more humane method of dealing with the issue - it seems to me that if you want to utilise the argument of cruel and unusual punishment that you've pretty much got to be against incarceration altogether.
If 3 strikes is a deterrent then has it had that effect in America? I haven't checked, I am just wondering if you know of any evidence to support this?
The problem is that we can't really ignore the US system, it's a legal system that is one of the closest to that of the UK in the World. If we were to ignore the ECHR and implement a death penalty then I'd suspect it's the route we're most likely to go down.
Rehabilitation can work in many cases, the major issue with it is that to do it properly and effectively tends to cost quite significant amounts of money. This doesn't prove popular when the easiest alternative is simply to lock them away comparatively cheaply with "luxuries" such as PS3s to keep them occupied so they can while away their time with minimal trouble - getting people to really change their ways is neither cheap nor easy in vast majority of cases but it's worthwhile that we try and try properly. There will always be some people who are simply beyond changing their ways and that's unfortunate but I cannot agree that the death penalty is ever the way to go.